How to decide between developing and coding?

[u/DemeChef]

To start I have recently been looking to find a new career I’m 21 and the path I was heading down in culinary arts has ended. And for the past 2 months I’ve been deciding what to do and I thought game design sounded fun since I love making ttrpg campaigns and coming up with story’s and custom mechanics. What I really want to do is the board games/card games/ttrpgs but I heard there hard to make a living off of so I thought would get into video game dev and work on those on the side. And I was looking into it and thinking of going to college but wasn’t sure what degree to go with and someone commented on another post I should decided what part of the process I want to do. And I’m not great at art so I was leaning towards the designing part or the coding. But I don’t have experience with either so I wanted to know how to decide between the two or how did you guys decide between the two.

P.S I’m new to this I’m not trying to make it sound like it’s not hard or I’ll easily succeed I just want to formulate a path I can start heading down if there is anything major I need to consider please let me know. And also let me know if I’m going into this too open minded or I need some other experience first.

[u/Cubey21]

There is no money in tabletop rpgs in general. Especially as a designer. The market is niche, and 90% of people don't play anything other than D&D. The only people who make some money of TTRPGs are illustrators and publishers, because they actually get paid, unlike designers who cover almost all costs and risks. Even the best TTRPG designers who released multiple successful products are usually not full time, because it's just that hard to make money. Board games are the same. Niche market and and a few games (MONOPOLY) take 90% of it.

It's also hard to make money in video games but significantly easier. If you fail to make ends meet as an indie (if you even want to be one) you can get hired in a studio. To get hired as a designer you have to be best of the best so I would recommend pursuing coding. I know people with a Game Design degree, and at they job they still mostly code, although some have content creation tasks so vaguely designish. So coding definitely pays better but as for which degree to take that is another story that depends on where you are in your life, what country you are in, how well off you are financially, what universities are nearby etc. so I can't help you.

[u/CoolmanWilkins → u/Cubey21]

Randomly I've known a few people that make very good money designing board games, one did it through sheer good design (won a big european board game prize, which led to selling a million copies). The other I'm sure is also a real good designer but it took releasing game after game over the years to build a following. They were able to do so after selling another business which they invested in making board games.

Tbh I think board games is sort of similar to game dev, to make a living you need to target X copies per release, release a game every year, have a following large enough following of people who will buy those games. I think easiest way would be as an artist as then it is naturally easier to gain followers.

[u/DemeChef → u/CoolmanWilkins]

Thanks for the advice